Sublime

As we’ve been saying, the story form is ruthlessly efficient. Everything in a story should be to purpose. Our working assumption is that nothing exists in a story by chance or merely to serve some documentary function. Every element should be a little poem, freighted with subtle meaning that is in connection with the story’s purpose. Honoring this

actuarial tables.

Lindy said nothing. She turned Rob’s sentences over in her mind, examining them one by one for truthfulness like a woman picking up grapefruit at the supermarket and checking each one for signs of softness and rot. She rejected all of them but the last. She guessed that was true. Rob probably hadn’t actually meant to go so far.

Across the road from where she’s parked, aspens tumble down the basin toward Fish Lake, where five years earlier a Chinese refugee engineer took his three daughters camping on the way to visiting Yellowstone.

Consciousness itself is a flavor of madness, set against the thoughts of the green world. Adam puts out his hands to steady himself and touches

But he has made her happy in the only place where people really live, the few-second-wide window of Now.

gingerly

Flipping backward through the photos, Nicholas feels the years peel off like steamed wallpaper. Always the animals.